I hope what you say about my being still a boy may have a grain of truth in it,—so that I can get mature enough to make you a little bit proud of encouraging me in this out-of-the-way corner of the world. But do you please take good care of that health of yours, if you want to see results: I am just a trifle uneasy about you, and you strong men have to be more careful than midges and gnats like myself. Please think twice over these little remarks.
I have no news at all for you;—there is no mail, of course, and nothing interesting in this muddy place. I can only “report progress.” I have a very curious collection of Japanese songs and ballads, with refrains, unlike any ever published in English; and I expect to make a remarkable paper out of them.
By the way, I must tell you that such enquiries as I tried to make for you on the subject of waterfalls only confirm what I told you. The mere idea of such a thing is horribly shocking to the true Japanese nature: it offends both their national and their religious sense. The Japanese love of natural beauty is not artificial, as it is to a large degree with us, but a part of the race-soul; and tens of thousands of people travel every year hundreds of miles merely to enjoy the sight and sound of a little waterfall, and to please their imagination with the old legends and poems concerning it. (The Japanese heart never could understand American willingness to use Niagara for hydraulic or electric machinery—never! And I must confess that I sympathize altogether with them.) But that is not all: the idea of a foreigner using a waterfall for such a purpose would seem to millions of very good, lovable people like a national outrage. The bare suggestion would excite horror. Of course there are men like —— who have suppressed in themselves all these feelings,—but they represent an almost imperceptible minority. They regard the ruin of Fairy-land as certain;—but the mass are still happy in their dreams of the old beauty and the old gods.
Lafcadio.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, January, 1899.
Dear McDonald,—Our scare is pretty nearly over;—the fever was broken to-day, and we had a consultation of doctors. It seems to have been pneumonia of the nasty, sudden kind. The little fellow never lost his senses; but for part of yesterday he lost all power to speak. I think he will get strong from now. The other boy got laid up about the same time, but much less severely. The night they caught cold, the thermometer went down to 26°, and the change was too much for them. By constant care for a few days, I think we shall have them all right again: then I shall hope, either to coax you up here, or go down to see you—if only to shake hands. So far I am lucky; for I have been working like a Turk, and keeping well. Work is an excellent thing to keep a fellow from worrying, and my “self-confidence” is growing in the proper cautious way again.
What a funny, funny episode is that story of Lieutenant Hobson, shipped to Manila to keep him from being kissed to death by pretty girls! Wonder if he would not prefer to face the Santiago forts again? The incident is quite peculiarly American, and pretty in its way: it ought to make heroes multiply. There is something to be a hero for,—to have one’s pick of the finest girls in the country. Still I have been thinking that most of us would feel shy about marrying the woman who would stand up and ask for a kiss in a theatre. It is the same sort of enthusiasm that makes women tear out their earrings, and throw them on the stage when a Liszt or a Gottschalk is improvising. I see no reason why heroism should arouse less enthusiasm and affection than musical skill; but don’t you think that in either case we should prefer the silent admiration of the giver that doesn’t lose her head, but remains strongly self-controlled—“all in an iron glow,” as Ruskin calls it? When the brave lieutenant wants a wife, I fancy he will be looking for that kind of woman, rather than the other.
There is no news for me by mail,—but we shall have another mail next week, I suppose. The university course runs smoothly: this is my third year; and my subject happens to be the 19th century, in which I feel more at home than in the other branches of the subject. Fancy! I am lecturing now on Swinburne’s poetry. They would not allow me to do this in a Western university perhaps—yet Swinburne, as to form, is the greatest 19th century poet of England. But he has offended the conventions; and they try to d—n him with silence. I believe you can trust me to do him justice here, when I get the chance.
Affectionately,